This article discusses the recently concluded fourth season of the podcast “What the FinTech?”, a popular industry show where guests submit and discuss widely-used fintech buzzwords. Many of these buzzwords are then metaphorically ‘jailed’ and banished from the sector.
- In each episode of the podcast, a host and guest together decide whether to ‘jail’ or ‘release’ a particular buzzword.
- The buzzwords ‘jailed’ in this season include ‘Channels’, ‘Phygital’, ‘Meta’, ‘Embedded finance’, ‘Machine learning’, ‘Unicorn’, ‘Alternative payment methods’, ‘Transformation’, ‘Disruptive’, ‘Collaboration’, ‘Teaser deal’, ‘Stablecoin’, ‘Crypto’, and ‘Hyper-growth’.
- Meanwhile, the words ‘NFT’, ‘ESG’, ‘Frictionless’, and ‘Funding’ and ‘Crypto’ (in the final episode) were all ‘released’.
From this list of buzzwords, it’s clear the issues of most concern in the fintech sector for this year include the blending of physical and digital experiences (‘Phygital’), the market disruption caused by new technologies (‘Disruptive’), the trend towards increasingly personalised services (‘Hyper-growth’), and the ethical considerations of technology development (‘ESG’).
On the other hand, the release of terms like ‘NFT’ and ‘Crypto’ suggests that these concepts have gained acceptance and are now considered part of the norm in the fintech world. This further proves the growing importance of blockchain technologies in finance.
Listeners and readers can expect the next season of the podcast to provide new insights into the world of fintech, with further discussions on the significance and impact of emerging trends and buzzwords.
